Been learning some things about being consistent and persistent the past few months. Checking out the Strong's concordance for the Bible, I didn't find that much on consistency but maybe it is because my Strong's is very old but I did find a lot about its cousin persistence. So turning to the Webster New World Dictionary I looked up that old fashioned word called consistence. I say old fashioned because sometimes we consider consistency to be some kind of disease linked to boredom. Thus, to get up and go towards a purpose by taking steps to see it take place in your life and then to keep maintaining it, is considered out. We would rather sit there and dream and hope that it just happens. However, I have discovered that hoping without taking consistent steps towards whatever it is that you want to do, doesn't help to achieve it and after getting there it doesn't help you maintain it, if you aren't consistently doing whatever it took to get you there. You need both, to do and to maintain or you'll end up right where you started, at the beginning, still hoping.
Consistency towards achieving a goal brings about continuity. It is defined as "holding always to the same principles or practices". Continuity is the glue that holds a person who is consistent together. It forges together a connected continuous flow. It's a series or successions that are unbroken, coherent and whole as Webster states it. It is actions that you do no matter what. If you do them today, then you do them tomorrow. Regardless of what your external circumstances may look like, you continue doing them.
As a Christian I have had problems with that. You see sometimes I start doing something that I know deep within I am called to do and right in the middle when things are going good I take a break and stop doing it. Before you know it, that what I had planned to achieve has become a thing of the past. It lies there, somewhere in my closet, unfinished. Having allowed a little bit of praise from others or my own satisfaction at how far I have come lull me into a state of contentment, I slowed down and forgot that you have to keep on doing what you were doing to keep moving forward.
Anything that has changed in my life has demanded consistency. When I think back on when I stopped smoking, and that was some years ago, my success started the moment that I refused to put a cigarette I had in my hand in my mouth and light it up. That was an action that followed my decision and that decision was glued together with consistency. Each day, I got up saying consistently to myself this is another day and I will not smoke. Every day I was determined not to pick up another cigarette. Consistency and continuity kept hammering at me.
Persistency on the other hand is sticking with it. I keep at it until.....and that means until the mastery of it deepen within my soul and whatever has it grips on me becomes an alien to me. Achievers are people who are persistent. It doesn't matter what their background, where they have come from, where they have been, or what their age is. They put it into their minds to rise above the norm and they do it. Colonel Sanders is a good example or Pastor Robert Schuller who built the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove California and many more whom I could mention.
Being consistent and persistent doesn't mean that you will not experience setbacks. Setbacks happen to all of us. I've had my share and they're not over yet but I've made up my mind to continue on. Like the persistent person who is consistent in what he or she does, I try to look at setbacks, examine them, do what I need to do to correct them if I can and keep going. But mind you, there are some things that you cannot correct, you just have to keep going. If we could ask the Apostle Paul he would probably tell you "you have to learn to live with them". As Stephen was killed, he stood there as people laid their coats at his feet watching them stone him to death. Paul couldn't change the fact that he had stood there and let that happened so he had to learn to live with it and put it behind him. Writing to the Philippians, I believe he is speaking from the heart when he wrote in Philippians 3 "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me.
If the Apostle Paul could do that then we can too. Therefore, let us embrace those qualities of consistency and persistence and move on.
Have a great weekend everyone.
"May the LORD who is near to all who call on Him accompany you in all that you undertake to do".
Schalom,
Pat Garcia Schaack
